Athletes who identify themselves as female but have medical disorders that give them masculine characteristics should have their disorders diagnosed and treated, [a panel of medical experts convened by the International Olympic Committee] concluded after two days of meetings in Miami Beach. The experts also said that rules should be put in place for determining an athlete’s eligibility to compete on a case-by-case basis — but they did not indicate what those rules should be.

Translation: it doesn't matter if you like yourself how you are. It doesn't matter if your "disorder" is causing you zero physical or mental harm. If you are "female" but you have "masculine characteristics," you gotta get that shit FIXED.

The panel’s recommendations were criticized by some athletes, who said that athletes with masculinizing disorders are so different from other women that their presence in competition is unfair.

“If you start to do this you are making a joke of the fact that there are two classifications — male and female,” said Doriane Coleman, a law professor at Duke University and a former elite 800-meter runner. “They might as well open it up and have women competing with men.”

Translation: if you do not see the world in binary, you're pretty fucked-up in the head! Also, if you SIMPLY DON'T FIT IN THE BINARY, you'd better get that shit FIXED so that you do. Because everything that's wrong is wrong with YOU, not with the people who think your very existence is unfair. Because women aren't allowed to be as strong as men--EVER. If they have a "disorder" that makes them exceptionally strong, this is BAD and WRONG and must be FIXED. Don't you dare step outside those binary categories!

Masculinizing disorders are rare but significantly more common among elite athletes than in the rest of the population, said Dr. Eric Vilain, a medical geneticist at U.C.L.A. and a participant in the meetings. They can be caused by an overactive adrenal gland, which would result in high testosterone levels from fetal life onward. Or someone might have the male Y chromosome but be relatively insensitive to testosterone. As a result, the person develops as a woman but has high testosterone levels that are only partly effective.

Translation, because NO ONE IS FUCKING GETTING IT: it's biology, not cheating. Now shut the fuck up, IOC. No one whined when Usain Bolt had exceptional speed, because he's a MAN and that's EXPECTED. If Usain Bolt had naturally-high levels of testosterone--if that had benefitted him--no one would have said jack shit. But Caster Semenya? OH GOD NO WE CAN'T HAVE A WOMAN HAVING NATURAL BIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES.

Members of the panel said that their concern was with sports federations’ responsibility for athletes with medical disorders. Athletes’ health might be endangered if their disorders are not diagnosed and treated, they said.

The IOC are only concerned for the health of the athlete--well, that sounds reasonable, right? And I would believe it if not for this next bit:

“Those who agree to be treated will be permitted to participate,” said Dr. Maria New, a panel participant and an expert on sexual development disorders. “Those who do not agree to be treated on a case-by-case basis will not be permitted.”

Translation: if you refuse medical treatment, which should be your right as a human fucking being, you don't get to play. I'd like to know what their case-by-case basis is going to be. Because somehow, I just don't think they're going to be nice and say, Well, if you're not going to die from it and you're happy, go ahead and have your extra testosterone! I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.

But, for critics like Coleman, this stance avoids the issue of fairness. It is not enough to simply lower testosterone levels after diagnosing an athlete’s disorder, she said. By that point, the athlete has already reaped the benefits of a lifetime of heightened testosterone.

But panel members said it was impossible to wipe away every advantage an athlete might have.

Translation: IF YOU ARE FEMALE AND YOU ARE NATURALLY STRONG, YOU ARE CHEATING. CHEATING CHEATING CHEATING!!! Nevermind that females with high testosterone who have never trained a day in their life for the OLYMPIC FUCKING GAMES are unlikely to be any sort of competetive threat. Nevermind that these people have worked for close to their whole lives in order to be capable of these feats. THEY'RE CHEATING. BIOLOGICALLY.

Forget about level playing fields, said Dr. Myron Genel of Yale. “For a lot of us here, there is no such thing,” he said. “We were told at the meeting about a Finnish family that was extraordinarily successful in cross-country skiing. They were found to have a genetic disorder that provided them higher levels of hemoglobin, and therefore they had superior oxygen-carrying capability. Specific genetic defects provide advantages.”

Translation: genes can give you extra-super-awesome physical advantages. Sometimes you get the gene, sometimes you don't. And yet people only make a fuss when it's a "woman who looks like a man," because that's the only time it matters.

You know, if you searched every Olympic athelete for genetic disorders that afforded them advantages, and you removed them from competition, I bet you wouldn't have much of an Olympic games left. The games showcase the very height of human skill and strength. These atheletes are not average in the first place.

It is my firm opinion that as long as you're not shooting up to get to where you want to be, do whatever you fucking want with any biological gifts you might have been lucky enough to get.

The guidelines so far are merely recommendations, the participants emphasized.

Oh, sure. "We recommend that you get back in your goddamn pink box or we won't let you compete."

For example, it advised that medical “centers of excellence” be created to diagnose sex-development disorders.

How that would work was not spelled out publicly, although New said a more specific plan had been discussed. Sports authorities would send photographs of athletes to experts like her. If the expert thinks the athlete might have a sexual-development disorder, the expert would order further testing and suggest treatment.

Keep in mind they're really only talking about female athletes, here. They keep saying athletes, but I have a hard time imagining they'll start sending in photos of male athletes who "look like women." Remember, folks: if you're female and you look like a man in the opinion of someone NOT YOU, you're in trooooouble.

Also left unresolved was how to enforce the policy about treating athletes whose sex seems ambiguous.

Consider, Vilain said, an athlete with a disorder that gives her a high testosterone level. Must she be treated to bring her testosterone level down to the average range for women? Or can it be in the high range? And how often must she be tested to be sure she is complying with her treatment?

Well, it's not like you can just treat 'em like HUMAN BEINGS. Because they're weird. And they're cheating.

Simpson, of Florida International University, said he recognized that some female athletes would find the guidelines unfair. But, he said, “we have to balance fairness to female athletes to fairness to other competitors.”

Oh, well then, let's make everyone all AVERAGE so that it will be COMPLETELY FAIR. I mean, I should be going to the Olympics to skate! It's not fair that I don't have biological advantages that made me super-awesome at my sport, so we should make everyone else have the same strength. Then it would be FAIR.

Life isn't fair, people. You might be good at something, or you might be shit at it. You might be somewhere in the middle. You might have awesome genes or shitty genes or a mix of the two or you might be perfectly average. You might go to the Olympics, or you might watch the Olympics.

I cannot express how angry and sick I feel that this mentality of "women must be like THIS" exists. We can celebrate those skiers who happen to be extra-good at carrying oxygen--but we can't celebrate Semenya, because she's not just cheating (biologically!), she's NOT EVEN A TRUE WOMAN. And we can't have that, now can we?

Nevermind that females with high testosterone who have never trained a day in their life for the OLYMPIC FUCKING GAMES are unlikely to be any sort of competetive threat.

True facts. I have a female cousin diagnosed with abnormally high testosterone levels -- she hates athletic activity and cuts gym just as much as I used to, and like me, she's useless at any sport. It's those athletes' hard work and dedication that gives them an advantage! Not bs like this :|

EXACTLY. ARGH. :| Having high testosterone doesn't make you magically better than everyone else! I mean, pit your average every-day businessman or something against any female Olympic athlete, and I can tell you who's going to win, "abnormal" testosterone or not!

I LOVE YOU. This says what I wanted to say about the whole failtastrophe in a much more lucid and concise manner.

(I feel so bad for Caster Semenya. To have this kind of life-disturbing news picked over in the media is horrible. And Like you say, if she'd had some genetic mutation which helped her in some other way - I dunno, increased lung capacity or something, NOBODY WOULD CARE. It's just such a fucking traincrash of sexism and... I hesitate to say transphobia because she's female-assigned and obviously identifies as a woman, but I guess it does fall under that particular bigot umbrella. OKAY I AM DONE.)

♥ ...this was lucid? Good to know. It felt rather like I was dumping blind rage onto my screen. >___>;;

(So much this. And I think it does involve transphobia, yes, because even though--as far as I understand--she is biologically female and IDs as a woman, the attitude people have about it is the same sort of "you're not a real woman/ a woman shouldn't look like a man" bullshit that they bring out against trans* people. I am seeing the same kind of fear and disgust that I see towards people who don't fit the cisgendered/cissexual binary.

yeah, this, good point. (My brain is burnt out on this stuff, I blame an evening spent lecturing my brother impotently about how it's bastardly to call Lady Gaga a "ladyman"/said brother threatening to tell my parents I like girls. What fun. [/venting in Kit's journal, sorry!])

That was my feeling when I read this. "This is horrible. I need to respond to this somehow. Now, where the hell do I even begin?" :(

...oh wow. I need to read that. And then I need to write an essay combining sci-fi references with the early (European-)American concept of the "true woman" and how we still haven't gotten rid of that stupid concept. It isn't gone, it just changed shape.

It was much more lucid than what I would have managed, which would be basically summed up by "FFFFFFF" XD

(and yeah, agreed.

Slight tangent, but I fucking hate any sentence that starts "you're not a real ___", to be honest. Because how the fuck do they know anyway?

I guess I am more sensitized to seeing it in terms of misogyny because I've been more aware of the concept for longer, but it all ties into the same bullshit gender policing. Like, to take a really mundane but pervasive example, all the Twilight haterz who start going on about EDWARD CULLEN'S NOT A REAL MAN CUZ HE SPARKLES AND HAS FEELINGS LIKE A GIIIIRL, somehow managing to be more sexist than the series itself without even trying :/

Ah, the weird thing with my brother, is that he has instances of being really sweet and generally getting it (the other week he was all "you're not supposed to call it a sex change, it's sexual reassignment surgery" to some of his friends and then looked over at me hopefully for approval, it was the cutest thing ever) and he was pretty cool when I (in hindsight ill-advisedly) came out to him as "basically confused", but then I guess his fourteen-year-old-boy nature shines through and he's back to calling random people faggots on Runescape...

Linking this, because it is so much more coherent in its rage than I could be right now.

THIS WHOLE BULLSHIT IS SO UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHFNSD;LAKJ;SLKDJF it's like a giant Jupiter-sized bull showed up and just shit in the face of everyone who has been involved in this and they were smothered in it and thus they just can't produce anything that is not PURE AND UTTER BULLSHIT

"THIS ISN'T SEXISM IT'S SPORTSMANSHIP"

right I forgot that sports are for men, that's why it says 'man' in 'sportsmanship' and not 'sportladyship'. Obviously the inferior ladybrain simply cannot handle SPORTS. Unless that ladybrain is cheating with

MAN HORMONES!!!

which any biologist with a tenth of a brain would be able to tell these GODDAMN FUCKING IDIOTS exists in everyone.

THAT'S RIGHT GUYS. ALL LADIES HAVE MAN HORMONES.

You know what's even crazier?!

MEN HAVE LADY HORMONES TOO.

Obviously this means that chefs and fashion designers, who are overwhelmingly male in realms traditionally considered feminine, SHOULD ALL BE TESTED FOR EXCESS LADY HORMONES and then FORCIBLY TREATED IN ORDER TO CONTINUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING because otherwise THEY ARE CHEATING JUST LIKE THESE SILLY LADY ATHLETES ARE CHEATING

WITH THEIR HORMONES

which obviously, they control with their cheating, cheating, conniving ladybrains. Consciously. All the time.

Also, what the fuck is a "masculine characteristic"? That they are saying that this should be determined on a "case-by-case" basis by "experts" seriously scares me, because what else can it mean but that individual female-ID athletes who excel in their sports are going to be arbitrarily considered too masculine and shipped off for sex-testing? Even if those tests come back and say that that athlete is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FEMALE even by their ridiculous whatever-the-hell-they-are standards (newsflash: levels of testosterone, estrogen, and supposedly male and female characteristics vary in all human beings), that's going to be a smear on her record and her story.

Do they think that the media will let go of that? That that athlete is going to be able to live the rest of her life without feeling those consequences? Is it that they are naive, or is it that they are so terrified of anything but a strict, arbitrary binary that they just don't care?

And I mean. Did they even consult a biologist about this? And god, I hope that means that Finnish family that they're talking about gets automatically disqualified from their sport. THEY'RE CHEATING WITH THEIR BLOOD. They should get it treated! WE'RE JUST CONCERNED FOR THEIR HEALTH!

(Oh good lord. I had not seen that attitude, because I hide from both of the rabid sides of the Twilight Debate, but that is sickening. Unsurprising, but sickening. If one wanted reasons to critique Edward's character, there are far better ways to go about it. Like not being a misogynistic gender-policing jackass when you do it. :|

...also, of course he's not a real man, he's a vampire! He is not even of the same SPECIES as Bella. /dork)

(I personally found Twilight boring and poorly-written but not actually offensive. Sure, it perpetuates some pretty Stone-Age values and most sensible reviews I've read are fairly merciless about that, but even when people get all IT WILL TEACH LITTLE GIRLS TO ACCEPT ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS, there is often a creepily paternalistic attitude behind it - you know, the book should be BANNED and BURNT because little girls are incapable of forming their own opinions or reading a text critically in any way. I tend to get this impression even more when they tend to go on about EDWARD'S A FAG AND A VIRGIN LOL in the background, because... yeah.

...also, um, my personal Twilight theory would have been that it could have been awesome if Bella had been a bit more lively. I didn't see Edward as a creepy violent stalker so much as this absolutely helplessly awkward dude who hasn't had sex in 100 years because he just does not know how to act with people - he wants to do the right thing but he's really useless, and I imagine a more proactive Bella could have had interesting chemistry helping him learn to engage with the world, etc. Which is why I found that whole much-derided scene in the movie where he's leaping about in the forest with her and looking all smiley kind of endearing - in a "Look he's so proud of himself!" sort of way.

Although that *may* be because I've RP'd a sort of quasi-Edward character for a long time (he's one of the (very)anti-heroes of my novel, and let me tell you, what with twincest and running from the police, Edwardlikeness is the least of his issues) and I am still rather attached to him. Now I think of it, he did actually have a doomed mutually miserable relationship with a Bella-type character of m_mas's, if Bella was a professional baker with superpowers, before she finally dumped him...

OH MY GOD I JUST WROTE THREE PARAGRAPHS ABOUT TWILIGHT IN A SERIOUS POST, I AM SO SORRY.

because little girls are incapable of forming their own opinions or reading a text critically in any way.

DUDE, OMG, YOU JUST EXPRESSED WHAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO EXPRESS. There's always been something that just hit me as wrong about how people insist that NO ONE SHOULD READ TWILIGHT EVER, BECAUSE THEN THEY WILL THINK LIKE BELLA!!! For one thing, I enjoy it as the vampire fluff that it is, and for another, I can and do read critically! Even if it's vampire fluff! I think lots of people should read Twilight, actually, and then--whether they are boys or girls--there should be discussion about the themes in the books, and what sort of culture allows those themes to exist, and why they're dangerous, and why even if Bella is cool with being manipulated by a stalker, WE OURSELVES do not need to be cool with it.

I maintain that Twilight does not singlehandedly cause girls to say things like OMG EDWARD IS SO HOT; I WANT TO DATE EDWARD. It is the fault of a culture that daily teaches them to be the passive hunted "lamb." It is the constant flood of media and advertising and general social ideals that teaches them to make themselves as attractive to men as possible, because being pretty much bait should be every girl's main goal in life, you see. Wanting to date Edward exactly how he is (breaking in to watch you sleep and all!) is a symptom, not the disease.

I completely agree that a lively!Bella would have been seriously kickass. I, um, kind of really want to write some kind of huge epic Twilight fanfic someday, where Bella is a Proper Character with, like, DYNAMICNESS. /0\

Hey, I for one think Twilight is a very important issue these days! (Not sarcasm!!! :p) It's in the public consciousness to the point that people who haven't read or seen it know what it is, and it's creating tons of discussion about sexism and sexuality and whatnot. I say bring on the talking-about-Twilight.

I didn't even know this was going on until now, so thank you. BECAUSE THIS IS FUCKING AWFUL AND WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD THINK THIS IS FAIR. (= why I'm bad at persuasive writing/speech?) Linking to this, because I clearly could not have said this better myself.

It's just ridiculous. If they want to "get that way" perhaps they should check to see if any of the female gymnasts have gone through puberty yet. LIKELY NOT for many of them. Many of them are MALNOURISHED!!

I'm on a TEAR about Superbowl commercials and CBS.

Well and I also insinuated that if the commercial was saying, "WHAT if Michael Vick was aborted?" (Instead of a nicer football guy with his Mama... like they would have killed Ghandi or Mother Theresa or something and then I DID think Hitler but that raises FAR TOO MANY internet rules... )

I digress... but if Michael Vick was never born so many dogs would be MUCH happier.

For one thing, I enjoy it as the vampire fluff that it is, and for another, I can and do read critically! Even if it's vampire fluff!

Exactly! God knows I used to read a lot of stuff with immensely anti-feminist undertones back in the day (hello, Narnia, with your creepy sexist and racist undertones that are mysteriously absent from the movie adaptations. Although it's lovely that they left in that whole thing about how making our own decisions is baaad and we should trust in Jesus to sort everything out. BUT THAT IS ANOTHER RANT FOR ANOTHER TIME) and I turned out all right.

It's really interesting what you say about girls being essentially groomed by society to act like bait - because I think that is something I have very much internalised, unfortunately (see, er, my recent slew of angsty posts, yes) - and one thing that's always interested me about the vampire genre as a whole is how different authors navigate and subvert the food=sex=death threeway metaphor. Sometimes this is done pretty nicely, but Twilight seems to... sort of bypass the whole discussion in the worst way, really. There's still the creepy Womens Is Food thing, but then again Sex Is Evil, so... yeah.

Then again, I've read interesting things saying that actually Edward's characterisation is supposed to be unrealistic, cartoonish, almost laughable - because he apparently represents some kind of idealised object of stereotypical female sexuality, much like the grotesquely stylised portrayals of women in porn targeted at men, for instance - but we're so used to that as a society that nobody bats an eyelid. They went on to say that while Edward's behaviour is creepy, that sort of hyper-attentive devotion and androgynous beauty maybe taps into teen girl fantasies in the same way the equally unrealistic girls in porn apparently attract dudes. I'm not so sure that I agree with the thesis (apart from anything else, it seems a bit binary-enforcing in itself) but it's interesting to discuss, I guess.

I don't think I posted about Semenya back when all this started--not sure why; I may have been too exhausted. But I just couldn't keep on not saying anything. :( I read that article and just got so angry... I don't understand people.

This this this. If they're soooo concerned about the health of athletes, there are more useful places they could be looking. Instead they'll look the other way for the very, very young female gymnasts (and skaters--god, don't get me started on how that can fuck up the body of a child), because you gotta be young, pretty, and feminine. And if you're not, you have to fix it. Rrrrgh.

I think the only reason I can be articulate at all is that I've been reading about and talking about this sort of thing for a few years now. ...which is kind of depressing, actually. Because that means it is NOT GOING AWAY. It is not even lessening. It's just moving around and showing up in different outfits. Dear gender policing, gtfo!

what else can it mean but that individual female-ID athletes who excel in their sports are going to be arbitrarily considered too masculine and shipped off for sex-testing?

Considering that is precisely what happened to Semenya, I doubt it can mean anything else. She got the third degree and then some because her running times improved drastically over a short period of time. When it didn't seem like she'd been doping, off they shipped her! And then there was a leak, the media pounced, and last September she ended up on suicide watch. GOOD GOING, PEOPLE. I can see this happening again and again. If anyone really thinks the test results of high-profile athletes will stay private, they're kidding themselves.

This is some messed-up bullshit, is what. I mean, I already had problems with the IOC, and now they pull THIS. On top of all the other THIS. Fuck them. They can't figure out where in their binary to put Semenya, so they think she has to change to fit the binary OR she can't compete. Someone's not thinking outside the box!

I feel ill. Just, no. Who the hell are they to tell anyone that they need to be "treated" for something that is perfectly natural (hi, there's this thing some of us like to call "genetics." Do you suppose they've heard of it?) and isn't hurting them just because it falls outside of their perception of what is "normal"?! *rage*

OMGF WTF. people need get it that people are people we do things that are not the norm. Hell look at Drag Queens they are happy and fine in High Heals and a full dress why the fuck cant a woman have the look of a man if she feels like she should. some day the world will wake up and see no one is the same and there is no normality. the universe is what we make it and by god we are all different and that is what makes us better than the mass collective of the "normal" people.:hugs millions of hugs: this world will wake up some day and i hope you are here to see it.

I found this over at wtf_sexism and I just wanted to like, sing your praises, or something. YOUR RAEG, GOOD SIR, IS VERY APPRECIATED. I was actually really disappointed in some of the discussion over yonder because some people... didn't seem to get the point. That this is the Olympics and these women train EVERY GODDAMN DAY to get where they are, and genetic advantage/defect/what have you or not, it did not make them an unfairly stronger or "better" woman than their peers.

I think this is both a sexist and transphobic issue as in Caster's case - she was faab and identifies as a woman - but (and I'm not sure if there was an official report or anything like that) I was under the impression that she may have had a condition like androgen insensitivity syndrome. My friend does - she in every way is a woman, but on the chromosomal level, she's XY and has what you would call "ambiguous genitalia" which is why she was assigned female at birth.

In general, people - and not just athletes - subjected to this complete bollocks with having to be TESTED to prove their gender or whatever, it's just completely humiliating and a violation to privacy and basic human rights. Like Paul Scott spouting off about how he will "make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance." Or people worried about folks that look TOO masculine using the girls toilets being perverted men pretending to be trans and vice versa.

going even further off track I like CS lewisOK his kids stuff is overtly religious and christianity of the day was more patriachal than it is now (discounting stone age fundamentalists) but I enjoyed it innocently when I was a kid and it is not all there is to him as an author. If i hadn't read Narnia I probably wouldn't have read any of his theological books and these are really good. I found 'the problem of pain' and 'the four loves' to be challenging reads that changed my outlook possitively. My Gran read 'a grief observed' when she lost her son and it really helped her.I haven't finished 'the four loves' yet but from what I have read so far it made me seriously think about whether my relationshipes were based on need only and whether my relationships with other people were purely about take. Highly recommended but I suggest being in a preety strong place emotionally if you read it.

Fair enough if you like him - I've read some of The Four Loves for classes and I thought it was interesting, but I can't stomach the later Narnia books particularly, I think some of the subtext there (Susan is excluded from the group because she likes ~boys~ and ~parties~ oh noes, and then, er, all her siblings and friends die and go to heaven and she's left behind. So yeah.)

It has been a while since I read any Narnia probably about 14 years so my memory is a little hazy (I read four loves more recently) I was 10/11 when I read them so possibly missed some of the subtext shall read again at some point and see if they offend me now ;) I am planning to finish reading the four loves this year I sometimes think that authors who write good non fiction are often not so good at fiction. Marina Warner being the exception to the rule!